


And when the stars threw down their spears

by EssayOfThoughts



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Codependency, Consent Issues, Dubious Consent, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Loki is a Manipulative Bastard, Manipulation, Wanda Learns Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-05
Updated: 2016-04-05
Packaged: 2018-05-31 08:16:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6462742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wanda grieves. Loki plots.</p><p>The world may be remade in scarlet and green.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. And that inverted bowl they call the sky

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wandasmaximoffs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wandasmaximoffs/gifts).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This fic is somewhat a prequel to [_For me, my love_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6270190). Fic title is from William Blake's [_The Tyger_](http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/172943).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title is from LXXII of the FitzGerald translation of [_The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyám_](http://classics.mit.edu/Khayyam/rubaiyat.html). Loki is a manipulative fuck.

Loki knows power. How can he not? He was born to it, raised to it, taught it. He had been surrounded by power from his earliest days, born as the prince of the Jotun. Then, then he had been taken to Asgard, and raised amongst the royals there. He had been taught power, power in the form of magic, by Frigga, the mother who should not have loved him and yet did all the same, loved him more fiercely than he ever thought he could understand.

She was dead, he knew. Dead because of the Midgardian his brother ( _adoptive brother_ hisses his mind) had brought to Asgard, dead because he had been locked up and unable to lend her magics his strength, unable to act as a second shield, a second illusion (the second son that he was).

 _She has lost the one she loves most, too,_ he thinks, watching the witch of Midgard through the window his power had opened. _And she too has power._

He is good at luring people in. How can he not be? He has not his brother’s ( _adopted_ brother’s) great strength, though he is certainly stronger than a Midgardian. He cannot wield a weapon of war with that same strength and skill, though a small knife, his magics, a spear, they he can handle with ease. He is not a soldier, no, he is a sorcerer if he is anything, and a silvertongued one at that.

(One has to be silvertongued, to work magic. To speak the languages required – even extinct Shiväisith – and to bend pure energy, warp the world’s laws just for a moment to one’s whims. He had learned how to apply that to people too, by watching Frigga, and then, with malice, he had surpassed her.)

(Sometimes he regrets surpassing her)

This one though... he looks at the witch that lives on Earth, so unaware of the full extent of her power.

He knows _why_ she is unaware. Why she was, why she remains so, what it would take to push her over the edge and see telepathy and telekinesis transformed into world-warping power. She has the spark of magic in her, as well as her gifts and together... he knows what she and he could do together.

There is, after all, a power in pairs.

(He and his mother, learning magic. He and his brother – _adopted_ brother – tricking and fighting. She and her brother, fighting the good fight, never apart, not in truth)

(He knows she felt her brother die, knows that has broken her ability to become a world-rending power, that it makes her fear herself with what she did after and fear her power that she might feel such pain again)

(He knows, too, that she is still so close to becoming that world-rending creature he sees in his dreams, dripping with gorgeous scarlet power against the great pitch darkness of space, and he so _wants_ that power to be his)

 _Little witch,_ he whispers, his silver as like her brother’s as he can make it slipping into her mind. _I can help you bring him back._

 

* * *

 

Wanda hears the words first in a dream. The silver of it snakes across the deep purple sky, coils down, and wraps around her hands like a serpent. _Little witch,_ says the serpent’s head on her right hand. Its body coils, around her wrist, drops down, loops up and around her left wrist, where it has a second head. _I can help you bring him back,_ says the serpent’s head on her left hand.

 _How?_ she wants to ask. _How?!_

In this dream though, she has no voice.

 _How?_ she tries again. _How? Please, tell me!_

Around her the dream shatters, the silver serpent shaking apart even as she tries to hold onto it, tries to keep it with her. _How?_ she cries, as loud as her mind can make it. She wakes crying out, her mind screaming out: _Give me back my brother!_

 

* * *

 

The second time she hears it she thinks she thinks she is seeing things, hearing things.

The snake is coiled on a light fixture, high up by the ceiling of the training chamber. It is the same serpent, she knows. It is that same silver – _almost Pietro’s,_ she thinks – and she can see both of its heads, dipping down and staring at her with bright green eyes.

"I will practice flying today," she declares, and lifts herself up.

It might not truly _be_ there, after all, but it does not hurt to check.

 

* * *

 

"Hello," she murmurs, when she is floating by the light and the snake does not waver in her sight. It is hard to balance still, but she is getting there, stretching her scarlet out to support her all the way down to the ground.

 _Hello, little witch,_ the same voice says, from the right-hand head of the serpent. It sounds brighter, warmer, almost fond like Pietro’s always had. The other head bobs, and then it whispers the words that make Wanda’s heart clench. _I can help you bring back your brother._

 

* * *

 

"How?" Wanda breathes, and she can feel tears beading in her eyes, feel the way her heart is beating and her scarlet wavers and she wobbles. _I will not fall!_ she decides. "Please, tell me how."

 _Come to me,_ the serpent says, both heads speaking in perfect synchrony. _On Asgard. I am powerful enough to bring you, and to teach you, and to aid you. I will help you bring your brother back._

"How?" Wanda asks again.

 _Come to me,_ the serpent says, and Wanda can hear the smile in its voice. _I will show you the way._

 

* * *

 

 _Asgard_ Wanda searches in the S.H.I.E.L.D. database, and then reads through every file it throws up. There are two big ones – New Mexico and Greenwich – and a myriad smaller ones, dating back decades. Wanda reads them all.

Thor, she knows, has gone back to Asgard, and she knows it grieves him to, with his brother dead.

 _His sorcerous brother_ , Wanda thinks, remembering things that Thor has said, stories he has told, images he has let dance through his mind. _A master_ , she knows, _of illusions, and of trickery, and of magic._

The next time the serpent comes to her she has questions.

 

* * *

 

It appears in her dream again. This time the sky is cyan, and she is walking through a forest growing out of an upside-down chessboard. In a matter of moments the chessboard forest becomes a skyship, and the world the right way up. The sky is still cyan all the same.

The serpent coils its way down the dark wood of the mast.

 _Hello, little witch_ , it says.

 _Who are you_? Wanda asks, sketching it out in scarlet before her. _Your name, and your purpose and your price._

She wants her brother back, she wants him back more than anything, and she thinks that the serpent knows that when it laughs.

 _A friend_ , it replies. _A name I will yet withhold, a purpose shared with yours, in that there is one_ **I** _would bring back, had I the power, and my price is nothing but help in my goal as I help in yours._

Wanda considers. Against the cyan sky sheep the colour of bright cerulean laced with deep azure spin. She wonders if it means something, that her brother’s colours are so present.

 _How?_ She sketches out before herself. _How would you bring me to Asgard, how would you return my brother to me?_

The snake on the mast spirals its way down, both heads watching Wanda with piercing green eyes. _The same way_ , the right-hand head says. _I would bring back my mother_ , the left-hand head finishes. _We are joined_ , they say, with a synchronicity she and Pietro used to share, and she _aches_ oh she aches to hear it, _in glorious purpose_.

 

* * *

“Do you wish to know about Asgard?”

The voice is unexpected and yet welcome. With Thor returned to Asgard none at base seem to know it quite so well as the Vision, and it is not so terribly surprising that he might have noted her search given how interlinked he is with the computer systems of the site.

Besides, Wanda thinks, he is good and pleasant company.

“I wanted to learn,” she says carefully. “The conflicts, what it is like, what they can do there.”

“I can tell you, if you would like?” Vision offers. “The Captain and Agent Romanoff have given us the afternoon off, after all.”

Somehow Wanda manages to smile. “Please,” she says. “I would like that.”

 

* * *

 

 _I have to,_ she longs.

 _I mustn’t,_ she knows.

 ** _Pietro,_** she thinks, and all sense has long since departed.

After all, there has never been anything they would not do for each other.

 

* * *

 

 _I agree,_ she sketches into the air of her next dream (it is a city, broken as Novi Grad was, flying as Novi Grad was, and she weeps in her heart of hearts to see such again).

 _I agree,_ she sketches out in scarlet. _How do I reach you?_

 _Oh, my dearest,_ says the serpent’s left head, and as ever the other head finishes: **We** _shall reach for_ **you.**

 

* * *

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments are much appreciated.


	2. Shadows of the world appear

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title is from Tennyson's _[The Lady of Shalott](http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174626)_. Amphisbaena are from [myth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amphisbaena). “Стварно?” means "Really?" in Serbian, according to Google Translate. Do correct me if the translation is erroneous. [Estrie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estries) are vampiric creatures from Jewish folklore. [Eithne](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eithne) is an Irish name which is pronounced "Enya".

Wanda leaves of her own volition. Wanda is taken by her own choice. The Avengers wake that morning to see nothing but a seal on the grass, Norse spirals and coils, and the hard knowledge that Wanda Maximoff is gone.

 

* * *

 

The world is a swirling matrix of chaos and Wanda does not try to make it make sense. Very little has made sense, since she lost her brother, so she knows there is no point in trying when the world has become more chaotic than she knows and than she can make it. Wanda closes her eyes as the magic of the bridge wraps around her and lifts her from Earth to Asgard.

“My lady.”

The voice that greets her is gravelly but serious, and Wanda looks up from a glowing glass floor to golden eyes under a golden helm. The man nods.

“His Majesty is waiting for you outside.”

Wanda nods, pauses, smiles, nods, murmurs a soft, “Thank you,” and heads for the opening doorway.

“My lady?” the man calls after her. “I am Heimdall. If ever you seek to return home you need but ask.”

His eyes are golden and serious, his expression just as severe, but even through the metal of his helmet Wanda can see his mind, honest and true in this one thing.

“Thank you,” she murmurs, and turns to walk on.

 

* * *

 

She can see the silver of him, when she sees him. It matters not that he sits astride a dark, eight-legged horse. That he wears gold and grey in a glamour over black and gold and green.

She can see the silver in the green of his eyes, in the glow of his mind, and she knows she has found her serpent.

“It’s called an amphisbaena,” he says, as though he can see her mind as she sees his. “Old lore on Midgard, but quite real here. I could show you one, if you wished?”

He offers a hand, stretched down from the great height of his mount, and Wanda knows he is more than strong enough to pull her to the horse’s back if she accepts.

“Later,” she says instead. “You know why I came.”

“In that case,” says he, “Let us find you some more suitable clothes.”

Wanda takes his hand.

 

* * *

 

“You know,” he says, as they ride the length of the glow-glass bridge _(Bifrost,_ whispers the serpent’s mind into hers, as easily as breathing), “You may speak whatever language you wish here. We will understand quite easily.”

 _“Стварно?”_ she asks, and cycles through languages. _“Sokovian? Serbian? German?”_

Before her on the horse he laughs. _“Ja,”_ he says. “Or _da_ , if you prefer. We will understand you, and you will understand us.”

It is easy to slip back into Sokovian, to rest her head on his shoulder as they ride the length of Bifrost and to murmur, _“Thank you,”_ in the language of her childhood.

 

* * *

 

She is shown to rooms, great and grand and golden. They are too vast, too golden, but she finds her way through. She had seen many outside, in the halls and corridors, but here... there are none. Even her new-found serpent – _Amphisbaena,_ corrects his mind gently – is quiet when they get there.

“These rooms are yours,” he says. “To use as you please for as long as you stay. No one will bother you here, but if you want companionship or someone to help you with something you need but ask.” Wanda looks around, overawed at the vastness of it all. Around her hands scarlet sparks in fear-uncertainty and she is startled by his touch when he takes her hands in his. His touch is cold, but gentle, and his eyes are bright and clear. “If you wish to rest, after your journey,” he says, “you are more than welcome. There is a bed through those doors,” he pauses, nods towards one set in the corner, “and there should be clothes aplenty should you wish to change to sleep.”

Wanda considers. The silver of his mind _(almost,_ she thinks, _like Pietro’s)_ is soft and certain. She can see minds through the walls but all are at a distance, and none so bright as to bother. “My brother-” Wanda starts and he shakes his head.

“Rest first.” he says, and his voice is soft, gentle, soothing. “You cannot even begin to learn the magics required until you are rested and settled.”

“I am,” she insists.

“How long,” he asks, “has it been since you slept soundly?”

Wanda considers, throwing her mind backwards. _Too long,_ she admits to herself.

“Tomorrow,” he promises. “I will start to teach you the magics tomorrow. But now, you should settle in, you should rest.”

“No,” she says eventually. “I’m not tired. But I’d like to see an amphisbaena.”

He smiles, light glinting in the silver-green of his eyes. “I shall fetch you one, then,” he says. “While you change.”

 

* * *

 

When he returns Wanda has changed her clothes. Her human clothes, _Midgardian_ clothes, stand out in the wardrobe, stark reminders of the planet that is her home. The clothes offered are mostly gowns, though there are some trousers, armoured, designed for the fight, tucked away in there. Wanda found a black dress that stretched down to her ankles in some soft fabric, and then a rich red piece of silk apparently meant to drape over it. They hung loosely, then tucked in at the waist with some golden belt. It left one shoulder bare, though, and Wanda felt still too raw to wear only that. By the trousers were some shirts and Wanda found one in deep burgundy that suited, and a long draping shawl in Pietro’s favourite blue.

(Wanda has missed Pietro’s shades of blue.)

He sits, waiting, on the soft seats in the room he first showed her. There is, twisting in his hands, a golden serpent – _Amphisbaena_ , he corrects – with eyes like garnets.

“The snake I showed you in your dreams,” he says, “is one my mother had. This beauty,” and he lifts the amphisbaena to Wanda’s eyes, “is new-hatched.”

Wanda’s hands, sparking startled scarlet, stretch out. “May I?”

His smile is charming. “By all means,” he says, and slips the serpentine creature from his hands to hers. “She is yours.” She notices, as he does so, that there is no outer layer to his face now. Black-green-gold clothes. Dark hair. Green-silver eyes, young face. This is the true visage of the man who invited her here.

Somewhere, in the recesses of her mind, there is fear.

 _Loki,_ she thinks.

 

* * *

 

The amphisbaena is soft in her hands. The gold of its skin is cool, but not so cool as his hands. It is sleek against her skin, the soft feeling of scales, the gold, the garnet eyes.

“Does she have a name?” Wanda asks.

Loki smiles. “Ask her,” he says. “She is smart enough to answer.”

Wanda lifts the serpent to her gaze, ember-eyes meeting both sets of garnet. Scarlet coils from her fingers, and her voice is soft. “Do you have a name?”

“We are Estrie,” says the right-hand head.

“And Eithne,” says the left-hand head.

“You may call us E.”

Their synchronicity almost makes Wanda weep.

 

* * *

 

E keeps Wanda company more often than not. Some days she is quiet, and other days she keeps up soft chatter where she is looped around Wanda’s neck. She can always zone out from it, let time pass to the soft noise of the serpent strung around her shoulders, rest on the scarlet sheets of the bed she has been given. Some days, some few days, she reads the books Loki leaves her, and, once she realises they become whatever language she knows that helps her best understand the text, she devours them. Time passes oddly for Wanda, and she learns all she can of the principles of magic.

The world is odd around her, nowadays. E makes sure she knows that time is _passing,_ but she does not always act on that. She is thankful that, when she does notice she is hungry, there is food waiting for her (food from _home,_ food from Sokovia, food she remembers from home and her childhood, before she and Pietro had spent two days trapped in rubble).

Sometimes, on occasion, Loki drops in.

“Oh dearheart,” he says, stroking her hair back, tucking it behind her ears. “How much of this have you read?”

Wanda scans the books before her, book after book on the principles of magic, on the basics, on how to start to manipulate and judge the extent of one’s own energy (She, Wanda knows, has the scarlet to call on as well, a greater strength than her body alone could ever muster. It is easy to call her own energy forth when the spine it flexes from is made of scarlet).

“Most of it,” she says, and tilts the book she holds just slightly. “Just this one left to go.”

“If you would like,” Loki offers, “I will start teaching you proper magic soon.”

Wanda looks at him as though he has remade Novi Grad.

 

* * *

 

“Here,” he says, and twists his hands. Gold rises up, interlaced with silver and green (his colours, Wanda knows, like red and gold and black are hers, like silver and grey and blue were Pietro’s). “Here,” he says. “You try.”

Wanda looks at the book, looks at the illustrations, at the runes which dance in her sight into a language she can understand. Wanda finds the magic that is so alike to her scarlet. Wanda finds her focus. Wanda twists her empty hands.

Scarlet rises, and gold, and shades of shadows. In her hands is a piece of carved and broken stone.

Loki is smiling, eyes darting between her eyes, her lips, the stone in her hands. “See?” he says, and his voice is soft. “You need the focus. You will need to practice. But,” he says, raising a finger, “We can do this. We can bring them back.”

Wanda’s eyes dart, Loki’s eyes, Loki’s lips, the stone in her hands.

“I promised you,” he says. “I will not break it.” His hands take hers, curl around fingers curling around stone. “You are beautiful,” he says, “You are powerful. Soon,” and his words are as much a promise as every one he has given before, “We will bring them back.”

Wanda kisses him.

 

* * *

 

Sometimes days pass like nothing. Other times she misses Pietro so much she _aches_ with it, time slowing to match the pain of it. Those days all she manages to recall is E, gently soothing her, coiling gently around her, and, sometimes, Loki’s voice, his hands, cool against her brow, soothing in her hair, his lips pressed, ever so gently, to her hands.

“ _One day,” he promises, “We will have them back.”_

Those days she wishes, more than anything, that he would let her try the more complex magics, the ones to warp the world.

 

* * *

 

“You are not strong enough yet,” he says and Wanda wants to _scream._ His hands – cold, gentle – hold hers. “You are powerful,” he says, “ _so very_ powerful, and you could be so much more powerful if you studied magic as I have but now, right now, you are not strong enough.” One hand rises, strokes back her hair where it has fallen into her eyes. “Your brother’s death has hurt you, as my mother’s death did me. You must rest and find your purpose. Then, you will be strong enough.”

 _I know my purpose,_ Wanda thinks, and know her voice is bright enough, clear enough, that he can hear her (she knows, too, that if she were to try to speak right now she would _scream). My purpose is to bring back my brother._

“Yes,” he says. “And when you are strong enough, we will.” He lifts her hands then, lifts them to his lips, his eyes (green-silver) fixed on hers. “I promise,” he says.

In the synagogue of Wanda’s mind her scarlet storm begins to still from its rising scream.

 

* * *

 

Loki is always careful how he touches her. Wanda wonders if that is because he has, at no point yet, admitted that he is in fact Loki. She knows he sheds his glamour around her, lets her see his true face, but he has not yet admitted to being who he is, for all she calls him by his name within the safety of her scarlet mind. Loki keeps his own kind of distance, as much said by eyes and brief moments of his ever-cool hands as by speech or the more expressive affection Pietro had always given.

Hair and hands, that is all Loki dares touch. Tucking her hair back, taking her hands. Sometimes he lifts her hands to his lips, presses a soft, cool kiss her skin, but always so carefully. She wonders if it is E, bold Estrie, watching Eithne, so often coiled about her neck, that warns him to be careful, but no, even when E rests by the firepit in her rooms and they are alone he is careful.

He watches though, piercingly with his green-silver eyes, gaze darting between her dancing scarlet fingers, her eyes, her lips.

Wanda is not blind to how he watches her.

There is something in his gaze, something that seems half-in-awe, and Wanda is disinclined to believe that the god of trickery truly finds anything remarkable in her.

“You are special,” he says eventually. His hands hold hers, gently. “Your power,” he says, and Wanda knows what he says about power is near-always honest, “Could rend worlds if you but trained enough.”

Wanda’s voice is quiet. “I need only rend death. All I want is my brother returned to me.”

Loki’s hand lifts, tucks a loose lock back, rests, just for a moment, coolly against her cheek. “We will do it,” he promises. “Together, we will do it.”

“Why?” Wanda asks, and E is a close-coiling presence about her neck, awake and alert. “Why did you ask it of me?”

Loki’s eyes dart. Wanda’s eyes, Wanda’s hands, Wanda’s lips. “You are special,” he says, simply. “You too have lost someone you love. You too have the potential for magic. You, Wanda Maximoff,” and he pauses for a moment, licks his lips, considers. “You are beautiful, and you are broken, and I would see you whole again.” His hands rise gently to her cheek, tentatively touching, cool fingers against her skin. “It is,” he admits quietly, “all too easy to love you.”

 

* * *

 

Loki is gentle with her still. It is as though he can see her mind as she can see his and that he simply _knows_ when a day is bad for her or not.

He is gentle with her, always. Some days he simply sits with her, especially the days that she is unfocussed. Simply sits there and stays there, talks with E, and gently combs cool fingers through Wanda’s hair soothingly.

It is one of those times that he first says, “You know who I am.”

Wanda is not entirely there, but she is there enough to speak. “Yes,” she says. “I’ve known since you first contacted me.”

She can hear the smile in his voice as he responds. “And yet you came.”

“For Pietro,” Wanda says, “There is very little I will not do.”

“When my mother died,” Loki says, “I helped to wiped out the species that killed her.”

Wanda’s hand takes his, where it is combing through her hair. She is half-sprawled on the vast bed in her rooms, Loki sat at her head, crosslegged and gently combing out her hair with his fingers.

“Love,” Wanda says, craning her neck to look at him, E slipping from her shoulders. “For its sake we all will do terrible things.”

 

* * *

 

“We are close,” Loki says one day. “Your training goes so well.” He kisses her hands, kisses her cheeks, Wanda presses a kiss to his lips. _“Soon,”_ he promises. “Soon we will bring them back.”

There is something reassuring in it, each time Loki tells her this, that they are closer, that her magic is stronger, her skills better. It feels _honest,_ honest in a way the platitudes of her teammates back on Earth did not. Even Vision, genuine as he had seemed, had not understood her grief.

Loki, however, _did_. He understood why it was so important to her to bring back her brother.

He understood what drove her, understood that some days she was so unanchored as to be almost insensible and was patient all the same, though he too had one he sought to bring back.

_(“No more delays,” Wanda had said the first time she had realised this had happened, and Loki had taken her hands.)_

_(“No,” he had replied, “As many delays as you need. Do not rush this.”)_

_Thank you,_ Wanda thinks, and it shines out of her mind in bright scarlet.

 

* * *

 

Sometimes Wanda thinks about her scarlet. It has always been there, since the experiments. She is not sure entirely where it comes from – it is _her_ scarlet, certainly, and not attached to the Mind Stone, but it’s not _entirely_ hers. She moves her hands, finds it, tugs it into the world so she can use it. It’s almost like fishing, sweeping her hands through, gathering it all up so she has enough for her purpose. She can do much with just a flicked finger, certainly, but it is better when she can _move,_ when she can _dance_ and pull great swathes of red to her soul.

And it dissipates, she knows that too. If she holds it but does not use it then it will start to dissipate.

She wonders, when she’s lucid enough and not puzzling over other things, how that applies to her magic. Does that make her magic weaker in the long run, when she bases it on her scarlet? Will it make her spells unravel? Would it make her brother come apart?

There is nothing in the books about this.

 

* * *

 

Loki, as ever, assuages her worries. Reminds her that a spell shared is a spell stronger, that the failings of her magic will be repaired by the strengths of his and vice versa. That they are so _close_ to completing her training, to being able to bring back Pietro and Frigga.

(That, Loki told her eventually, was his mother’s name. Wanda understands the desire to keep the name close when one can, to not tell others. “Frigga,” she had said, when Loki had told her. “We will bring her back too.”)

 

* * *

 

“There are,” Loki says one day, “Those that would stop us.”

Wanda has wondered about this. Death is a final absolute, an eternal end, and there are many who would not like to see that undone.

“Asgard has enemies besides. The Dark Elves are but one, and they were hard enough to destroy.”

 

* * *

 

It is, with time, easy to love Loki. He gives her space, gives her affection gives her _love._ He gives her advice, teaches her magic, trusts her with his true face and true name.

(“Loki Laufeyson,” he had murmured one evening. “I am not even truly of Asgard.”)

(His voice had been so bitter, his face so blue, eyes so red. “Yet you rule them well,” Wanda had said, and kissed him.)

Some days, some few days, she sits with him in his rooms, instead of he with her in hers. His rooms, his true rooms, are accessed through a passage from the rooms known as Odin’s, and Loki’s rooms are dim, and cool, with great arcing columns, filled with a sense of peace.

Wanda likes it, likes the peace, likes the space, but is slightly annoyed that she cannot easily read in it.

“So illuminate it, dearheart,” Loki says. “There is a spell to light the lamps if you so wish.”

Wanda looks at him, considers, walks around a column, her hand trailing over the stone. “You think that I can do that spell?”

“I think,” Loki says, “you can do a great deal more than you might believe.”

“If I get it wrong, though,” and this is what Wanda fears. “I do not want to hurt you.”

Loki reaches out, takes her hands. “You won’t,” he promises. Wanda, still uncertain, glances away from the bright certainty in his green-silver eyes. “You can do it,” he promises, lifting her hands to his lips. “Please,” he says, the word a breath against her knuckles, “For me, my love.”

Wanda searches out the silver of his gaze, finds her focus, finds her scarlet, and twists the spell into being.

 

* * *

 

_(That evening is later half-remembered. All that followed, reading, talking, magic. E slipping away as they pressed close in embrace, skin to skin and kiss for kiss, beneath the sheets of Loki’s bed.)_

 

* * *

 

“Sometimes,” Loki says, rising from the throne, lifting Odin’s spear, “People make spectacularly foolish decisions.” Wanda alone, of all those gathered, can see through the glamour he wears. His expression is more than the sorrowful righteousness he wears through Odin’s face. In his own he is _furious_. Thor is far away, searching for news of the Infinity Stones, and cannot be easily sicced on these new enemies, and the sorceries that Loki knows could protect Asgard now are not ones that Odin would use.

Loki is furious. It is _his_ kingship, _his_ kingdom, _his_ place to protect. Wanda knows he needs Asgard, needs all of the power he can access here in order to bring back his mother, and understands intimately why he is so furious. E, sensing Wanda’s intentions, lifts Eithne’s head to touch her chin.

Wanda reaches gently to touch his sleeve from where she is sat, a little way down the dais from him.

“My king,” she says, and his green-silver eyes fall on her. “Let _me_.”

 

* * *

 

Wanda looks at the bodies around her and feels nothing, nothing at all. They are dead. Dead at her hand, at her scarlet. She has _killed_ them, and she feels nothing, nothing at all.

They were a threat, she knows. Loki had told her as much, come to threaten Asgard, to threaten _him_. They would gladly have killed her, killed Loki, slaughtered Asgard and all its people. Wanda cannot let that happen. She has lost too much that is dear to her, her parents, her city, her brother. Asgard has sheltered her, Loki loved her, and still, _still_ , Loki is the key to returning her brother.

She cannot see him dead.

Wanda stares out at the field of bodies around her, scarlet lashing like angry serpents, and feels nothing at all.

She turns, lifts her scarlet skirts, walks through the corpses and back to Loki. He is standing on the dais, holding his father’s spear. She can see through his glamour, see his true face. His eyes are fixed on her, his face in an expression of awe. As she steps near his hand reaches gently to take hers, heedless of the scarlet still lashing.

“Home, dearheart,” he says. “Let us return home.”

 

* * *

 

When she has the strength, and the confidence, Wanda practices magic on her own. Levitation is simple, is so like what her scarlet can do, but conjuring, summoning transfiguring are all far more complex, take far more time to master.

Dreams, though, Wanda loses herself learning about dreams. About subconscious dreams and lucid dreams, and dreams remembered and forgot. How to summon up old dreams (she summons up a dream she had shared with Pietro long ago and weeps), how to remember those forgot (she remembers a nightmare her scarlet had hidden from her, and she _screams),_ how to see friends, see the _future_ , be they or it near or far. For the near future, the spell is simple enough.

Wanda dreams what is to come.

 

* * *

 

 _Half seen through fog, uncertain of time, but **Pietro** bright and alive, and Wanda is never so certain of the truth of her path as when she wakes that morning_.

 

* * *

 

“Soon,” Loki promises, when Wanda asks if they are close yet to bringing back her brother. “We are almost ready. I must speak to Hel that we may have their souls.”

His kiss is gentle and cool, and his hands are lightly wrapped around hers.

“Soon,” he promises.

 

* * *

 

Waiting, Wanda wonders of Earth. She has not thought of it – has barely even thought of the days passing, but for how much closer they bring her to Pietro living or dead – and she half-regrets it. She remembers, distantly, in amongst the books on dreams, a spell to see those near or far.

Wanda dreams of Earth.

 

* * *

 

 _Avengers base, Vision, gentle and kind, Sam the Falcon, patient and warm, and, amongst them all_ –

_Pietro._

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments are much appreciated.


	3. wept and fasted, wept and prayed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is from T.S. Eliot's [_The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock_](http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/173476). This fic is semi-continued in [_For me, my love_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6270190).

She would kill him, she would, she would, she would, she _can’t_.

She runs from Loki’s lie, runs from the bedroom, runs from the comfort she has been given and flees down the length of the rebuilt Bifrost to Heimdall.

“My brother,” she gasps, out of breath. One of her hands is twisted in the silk of her scarlet skirts, twisting the cloth over and over. “My brother, is it true he has returned?”

“Quite,” Heimdall says, voice deep, and reverberating through the chamber. “I watch him now. It is rare a soul is returned from the great beyond.”

“Please,” Wanda says, and she is _still_ out of breath, her heart hammering in her chest, but _her brother_ , her _brother_ , half her soul and he is returned _, returned_. “Please, Heimdall, please-”

“My lady,” Heimdall says, stepping to the podium, pushing his great golden sword into the aperture. “It would be my honour.” Images dance in his mind, flickering glimmers of Loki’s face and the illusion of Odin.

 _He knows_ , Wanda realises. _That it is Loki and not Odin that sits the throne of Asgard_.

“Thank you,” she says, and she can feel the scarlet welling up in her eyes, stretching out, spelling out _I know too_ , behind the ever-seeing eyes of the watcher of Asgard.

Then she steps into the rainbow of light and she is falling.

 

* * *

 

She is on Earth, she can feel it, smell it in the air, hear it in the birdcalls, know it by the bright blue presence of her brother’s mind. The ground beneath her is burned grass and growing, a great twisting knot like that Thor had left behind. She glances around, spots staring eyes, scans startled minds, and discards them.

 _Pietro_ , she thinks, and walks within the walls.

 

* * *

 

It has been a long year since she last was here, but the halls are the same, the faces familiar. Wanda sees them, but barely notes them, finding her way through the corridors towards the bright-pulsing blue of her brother’s mind.

She hears whispers as she passes, sees guns drawn, but it is simple enough to raise a hand, twist scarlet magic and remove the bullets to a single neat line on a desk. _No one_ , Wanda thinks, _may keep me from my brother_.

The room she tracks Pietro’s mind to is a meeting room, a planning room. Wanda remembers the Captain taking them all there when he formed them into a new team, to discuss what they were going to do. Through the door she hears Pietro’s voice in accented English: “If we are going to find my sister—”

Wanda opens the door.

 

* * *

 

The room is silent, the room is still. She can see Pietro, standing, eyes bright and blue, his hands in fists on the table. Vision is beside him, Sam and James Rhodes opposite, the Captain and the Widow at either ends of the table.

Wanda fixes her eyes on her brother, murmurs soft Sokovian. “It’s me.”

 

* * *

 

The room is shouting, the room is chaos. Pietro’s arms are warm around her, her mind linking back to his with all the ease it has ever had. Wanda tilts her head up to her brother’s, feels the soft weight of his brow against hers. Their eyes are closed. Now, this close, their minds linked, they do not need to see each other to know each other.

They’ve always known each other. That is why it is so hard for them to be apart.

“You’re _alive_ ,” Wanda breathes.

“The Cradle,” Pietro says. “And some other things they had. They thought that if they could wake me I could find you.” Wanda can feel his hands against her cheek, in her hair, the heel of his hand gentle and warm against her neck. “I woke and you were _gone_.”

Wanda does not have to hear his next words to know what he must have thought.

“I thought you’d died too.”

Wanda’s hands rise, find her brother’s hands and wrists, find the scar on the back of his hand from the drip link they’d kept there for months in the castle, traces down, finds the long scar on each wrist.

“Pietro…,” she starts and Pietro’s head is shaking against hers.

“You know,” he says. “You’ve always known. I do not want to live if you don’t.”

“I’m sorry,” Wanda says, and her hands are wrapped tight around her brother’s wrists. “I’m so sorry.”

Pietro’s voice is earnest, almost desperate. “Where _were_ you?”

“I think,” Vision’s voice breaks in, first in Sokovian, and then in English for the sakes of the baffled remainder of the team, “that we would all like to know where you have been.”

As one they look at the team.

“Yeah,” says the Captain. “Knowing would be nice.”

Wanda swallows. “Asgard.”

The room is quiet. The room sighs. “We were right then,” the Captain says. “More important then, _why_ were you on Asgard?”

Wanda glances to Pietro, squeezes her hands around his wrists just a little, pulls his hands away from her face. For a moment his arms lock, and then, at her tugging, drop. He whisks away, whisks back with a spare chair, and Wanda sits. Pietro, without pause or question, moves his chair and sits beside her.

“Loki,” she says. “He invited me.”

 

* * *

 

The room is in an uproar.

“Thor said Loki is _dead_ ,” says Rhodes, and then:

“Loki died fighting the Dark Elves,” from Vision.

“No,” Wanda says. “He rules Asgard.”

The silence is almost deafening.

“Why?” Natasha asks, while the rest gape and stare. “Why did he invite you?”

Wanda shrugs. “He lied,” she says.

“Right,” says Falcon, lifting a finger like a student in class. “Better question, _why did you go?”_

Wanda glances to Pietro, glances to where his hand is gently wrapped around hers on the table, reassuring, warm, _alive._

“He said that he could bring back Pietro if I helped him,” she says. “He wanted to bring back his mother. He said he understood.”

The room, again, falls to quiet. Wanda’s hand twists in Pietro’s, presses, palm-to-palm, against his. _I’m here,_ Pietro thinks, as loud and clear as a bell. _I’m here_.

“We have to tell Thor,” Rhodes says. “As soon as we can.”

“I may have a way,” offers Vision. After a rapid discussion Vision leaves, not by the door, but striding through the wall.

“It’s quicker,” Rhodes says, when Wanda glances questioningly at him – she did not remember Vision walking so calmly through walls before. “This is urgent.”

Wanda nods, glances around everyone else. Most look well enough, but the Captain… Wanda does not think she has seen the Captain look this tired before.

“Right,” he says. “How you got there, why you went there. Why did you come _back?”_

This… Wanda does not know where to start. _At the beginning_ , whispers Pietro’s mind. _Best place to start anything._ Wanda’s hand squeezes his tightly.

“Loki was teaching me magic. I had practiced pro– prophetic?” Wanda’s tongue stumbles over the word, her fingernails dig into her brother’s hand. The Captain nods. “Prophetic dreams,” says Wanda. “I decided to practice a far-sight dream, to see how you all were.” With her free hand she gestures to her brother. “I saw Pietro.”

“And you got back because?” Natasha’s voice is probing.

“Heimdall,” Wanda says. “He had seen Pietro too. He opened the Bifrost.”

“Right,” says Sam. “One more question. What’s the snake around your neck?”

 

* * *

 

Introducing E to everyone takes the last of Wanda’s driving strength. She almost slips off her chair, leaning against Pietro, and he scoops her up in a moment, stands. The Captain sighs, nods, lifts his chin towards the door.

“We’ll continue tomorrow,” he says. Pietro, slowly, carefully, at normal human speeds, walks back to his room carrying her.

It is, Wanda notices, the room that had been hers before she’d left.

“They gave me it,” he says, shifting his grip on her to open the door. “After…,” he glances down, at his wrists. “They thought it would help me to know that you’d survived the battle.” Pietro sets her, gently, on the bed, draws the blankets up around her, strokes her hair back. “Sleep,” he says, smiling fondly. “You will need to be awake for tomorrow.”

Wanda’s hand reaches out from under the blankets, takes her brother’s free one. “I do not want to be awake tomorrow,” she says. “I do not want to talk of it. Not to them.”

“To me then?” he offers. His hand is warm and gentle in her hair, combing through it softly, over and over. Wanda’s head shakes against the pillow.

“Not at all,” she murmurs.

Pietro’s thumb strokes, soft and slow and warm, across her brow, by her hairline. “Show me?” he offers. “All at once. So you do not have to look at it all. I will tell them if you want.”

Wanda’s hands disentangles from his, rises with scarlet twisting around it. “There is so much,” she whispers. “Some you will not want to see.”

She can feel his hand, gentle, consistent, soothing, combing through her hair. “Show me anyway,” he says softly. “Let me help.” Wanda’s eyes stay fixed on his, waiting for him to blink or look away, until her eyes water. “Show me,” he murmurs, hands still soft in Wanda’s hair. “I am here.” Wanda shifts, rests her head against his thigh, twists her fingers to release the scarlet to Pietro’s mind.

“I’m sorry,” she murmurs in Sokovian, eyes fluttering closed. She is not quite asleep as she feels Pietro’s lips against her brow, Sokovian whispered back.

“There is nothing to apologise for.”

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments are much appreciated.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Prompt: Some blessed Hope](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6502972) by [EssayOfThoughts](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts)
  * [Prompt: Nothing beside remains.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7925473) by [EssayOfThoughts](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts)




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